Content:
conclusion of an earthday89 talk by Daniel Quinn (ishmael.org) =======
google cache (64K) of Sapoty Brook material extracted from his book Eco-Eating;
a very original and most scientific look at food value (emphasizing and
explaining why fruit is the most perfect food). ----- some comments
on the inminds.com boycott posts ====== 150313 Fisk in the Independent:
14 March 2002 Middle East crisis =======150041
Greg Palast interview
with Alex Jones 149983 State of mind by Israel Shamir -------- ----- Kelley
on democracy at street level

Could it be that Mr
Bush has another war in mind for the region, that perhaps Vice-President
Dick Cheney, now touring the Arab world and Israel, wants Arab support
for an attack on Iraq? UN resolutions don't disappear as fast as presidential
"visions" and the world now has the idea – and it's only an idea – embedded
in a serious UN document. Indeed, it's probably the first time the UN has
had a "vision" about anything. But it fails to address the far more important
point of UN Security Council resolution 242 of 1967, upon which the Oslo
agreement was supposed to have been founded. It calls for Israeli withdrawal
from territories it occupied in the Six Day War. Yesterday's UN resolution
makes no reference to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (nor to
the occupied Syrian Golan Heights) and thus presents the world with an
image, or "vision", of two sides fighting on level ground. When it "demands
immediate cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terror,
provocation, incitement and destruction...", it is unclear whether the
Security Council believes Israel is occupying Palestinian land or whether
it thinks that the Palestinian Authority is occupying Israel. Which is
why the original Syrian draft resolution, which specifically talked about
Israel as the "occupying power", was withdrawn – along with its call to
Israel to respect the Geneva Conventions protecting civilians under occupation.
Syria abstained from the vote. Israel's UN ambassador called the latest
resolution "balanced". The only verbal connection between the new resolution
and the all-important 35-year-old 242, which specifically refers to occupation,
is the vaguely worded call for the states to live "within secure and recognised
borders". No mention of Jewish settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab
land, no mention of east Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital, or a right
of return for any refugees. Like the Oslo agreement, this latest resolution
leaves these critical issues out of the "vision", as presumably something
to be resolved later. It was left to the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan,
to express his revulsion at the current level of violence, to refer specifically
to Israel's "illegal occupation" and to "morally repugnant" Palestinian
suicide bombings. This is better than nothing but Mr Annan's words are
not written into any resolution. The Security Council, now that the US
has weakened its new resolution, makes no moral judgements at all, even
though the illegality of Israel's occupation partly hinges on the Council's
own 242 resolution calling upon Israel to withdraw. As always, the Arabs
– anxious not to alienate the Americans – had to clap their hands at the
"vision" bit, as if it contained the seeds of Palestinian sovereignty.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, the so-called Palestinian Information Minister, said
it represented a "defeat" for the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon
– which is nonsense because the US would not have proposed the text unless
it met with Israel's approval – and called for "direct international intervention
to implement this resolution through ending the Israeli occupation and
evacuating all the Israeli settlements" from Palestinian land. But there's
nothing about international intervention in the UN text, nor about settlements.
All in all, then, a pretty vision, to run alongside Saudi Crown Prince
Abdullah's own watered-down version of resolution 242. Let's see how much
it helps Mr Cheney as he seeks approval for yet another Middle East war.
------------- Systematically tearing nations apart... (english) by Greg
Palast interviewed by Alex Jones 2:31pm Wed Mar 13 '02 (Modified on 6:53pm
Wed Mar 13 '02) "We are exposing that they are systematically tearing nations
apart, whether it's Ecuador or Argentina. The problem is some of these
bad ideas are drifting back into the U.S. In other words, they have run
out of places to bleed." AJ: This is earth shattering. Can you break it
down for us and tell us what the economists have done? GP: Well, I'll tell
you two things. One, I spoke to the former chief economist, Joe Stiglitz
who was fired by the (World) Bank. So I, on BBC and with Guardian, basically
spent some time debriefing him. It was like one of the scenes out of Mission
Impossible, you know where the guy comes over from the other side and you
spend hours debriefing him. So I got the insight of what was happening
at the World Bank. In addition, he did not brief me but I got some other
sources. He would not give me inside documents but other people handed
me a giant stash of secret documents from the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund. AJ: So to insulate himself, somebody else did it. GP: No,
I'm telling you. He wouldn't touch it but I really did get from completely
independent sources a big stack of documents. AJ: Just like you got W199I,
from the same folks we got it from. GP: And so one of the things that is
happening is that, in fact, I was supposed to be on CNN with the head of
the World Bank Jim Wolfensen and he said he would not appear on CNN ever
if they put me on. And so CNN did the craziest thing and pulled me off.
AJ: So now they are threatening total boycott. GP: Yea right. So what we
found was this. We found inside these documents that basically they required
nations to sign secret agreements, in which they agreed to sell off their
key assets, in which they agreed to take economic steps which are really
devastating to the nations involved and if they didn't agree to these steps,
there was an average for each nation that signed one-hundred and eleven
items that they are required to sign on to. If they didn't follow those
steps they would be cut-off from all international borrowing. You can't
borrow any money in the international marketplace. No one can survive without
borrowing, whether you are people or corporations or countries - without
borrowing some money and having some credit and ... AJ: Because of the
debt inflation pit they've created. GP: Yea, well, see one of the things
that happened is that - we've got examples from, I've got inside documents
recently from Argentina, the secret Argentine plan. This is signed by Jim
Wolfensen, the president of the World Bank. By the way, just so you know,
they are really upset with me that I've got the documents, but they have
not challenged the authenticity of the documents. First, they did. First
they said those documents don't exist. I actually showed them on television.
And cite some on the web, I actually have copies of some... AJ: Greg Palast
dot com? GP: Yea, gregpalast.com. So then they backed off and said yea
those documents are authentic but we are not going to discuss them with
you and we are going to keep you off the air anyway. So, that's that. But
what they were saying is look, you take a country like Argentina, which
is, you know, in flames now. And it has had five presidents in five weeks
because their economy is completely destroyed. AJ: Isn't it six now? GP:
Yea, it's like the weekly president because they can't hold the nation
together. And this happened because they started out in the end of the
80s with orders from the IMF and World Bank to sell-off all their assets,
public assets. I mean, things we wouldn't think of doing in the US, like
selling off their water system. AJ: So they tax the people. They create
big government and big government hands it off to the private IMF/World
Bank. And when we get back, I want to get to the four-parts that you elegantly
lay out here where they actually pay off the politicians billions to their
Swiss bank accounts to do this transfer. GP: That's right. AJ: This is
like one of the biggest stories ever, Sir. I'm sorry, please continue.
GP: So what's happening is - this is just one of them. And by the way,
it's not just anyone who gets a piece of the action. The water system of
Buenos Aires was sold off for a song to a company called Enron. A pipeline
was sold off, that runs between Argentina and Chile, was sold off to a
company called Enron. AJ: And then the globalists blow out the Enron after
transferring the assets to another dummy corporation and then they just
roll the theft items off. GP: You've got it. And by the way, you know why
they moved the pipeline to Enron is that they got a call from somebody
named George W. Bush in 1988. AJ: Unbelievable, Sir. Stay right there.
We are talking to Greg Palast. BREAK AJ: We are talking to Greg Palast.
He is an award-winning journalist, an American who has worked for the BBC,
London Guardian, you name it, who has dropped just a massive bomb-shell
on the Globalists and their criminal activity. There is no other word for
it. You link through at inforwars.com, you can link to his web site - gregpalast.com,
or any of the other great reports he has been putting out. He now has the
secret documents. We have seen the activity of the IMF/World Bank for years.
They come in, pay off politicians to transfer the water systems, the railways,
the telephone companies, the nationalized oil companies, gas stations -
they then hand it over to them for nothing. The Globalists pay them off
individually, billions a piece in Swiss bank accounts. And the plan is
total slavery for the entire population. Of course, Enron, as we told you
was a dummy corporation for money laundering, drug money, you name it,
from the other reporters we have had on. It's just incredibly massive and
hard to believe. But it is actually happening. Greg Palast has now broken
the story world-wide. He has actually interviewed the former top World
Bank economist. Continuing Sir with all these points. I mean for the average
person out there, in a nutshell, what is the system you are exposing? GP:
We are exposing that they are systematically tearing nations apart, whether
it's Ecuador or Argentina. The problem is some of these bad ideas are drifting
back into the U.S. In other words, they have run out of places to bleed.
And the problem is, this is the chief economist, this is not some minor
guy. By the way, a couple of months ago, after he was fired, he was given
the Nobel Prize in Economics. So he is no fool. He told me, he went into
countries where they were talking about privatizing and selling off these
assets. And basically, they knew, they literally knew and turned the other
way when it was understood that leaders of these countries and the chief
ministers would salt away hundreds of millions of dollars. AJ: But it's
not even privatization. They just steal it from the people and hand it
over to the IMF/World Bank. GP: They hand it over, generally to the cronies,
like Citibank was very big and grabbed half the Argentine banks. You've
got British Petroleum grabbing pipelines in Ecuador. I mentioned Enron
grabbing water systems all over the place. And the problem is that they
are destroying these systems as well. You can't even get drinking water
in Buenos Aires. I mean it is not just a question of the theft. You can't
turn on the tap. It is more than someone getting rich at the public expense.
AJ: And the IMF just got handed the Great Lakes. They have the sole control
over the water supply now. That's been in the Chicago Tribune. GP: Well
the problem that we have is - look, the IMF and the World Bank is 51% owned
by the United States Treasury. So the question becomes, what are we getting
for the money that we put into there? And it looks like we are getting
mayhem in several nations. Indonesia is in flames. He was telling me, the
Chief Economist, Stiglitz, was telling me that he started questioning what
was happening. You know, everywhere we go, every country we end up meddling
in, we destroy their economy and they end up in flames. And he was saying
that he questioned this and he got fired for it. But he was saying that
they even kind of plan in the riots. They know that when they squeeze a
country and destroy its economy, you are going to get riots in the streets.
And they say, well that's the IMF riot. In other words, because you have
riot, you lose. All the capital runs away from your country and that gives
the opportunity for the IMF to then add more conditions. AJ: And that makes
them even more desperate. So it is really an imperial economy war to implode
countries and now they are doing it here with Enron. They are getting so
greedy - they are preparing it for this country. GP: I've just been talking
to, out in California just yesterday, from here in Paris, the chief investigators
of Enron for the State of California. They are telling me some of the games
these guys are playing. No one is watching that. It's not just the stockholders
that got ripped off. They sucked millions, billions of dollars out of the
public pocket in Texas and California in particular. AJ: Where are the
assets? See, everybody says there are no assets left since Enron was a
dummy corporation - from the experts I've had on and they transferred all
those assets to other corporations and banks. GP: Well yea, this stuff
has really gone just like a three-card Monty game. I mean remember that
there is money at the bottom. You did pay California's electric bills according
to the investigations, they are telling me that they were pumped up unnecessarily
by 9 to 12-billion dollars. And I don't know who they are going to get
it back from now. AJ: Well they actually caught the Governor buying it
for $137 per megawatt and selling it back to Enron for $1 per megawatt
and doing it over and over and over again. GP: Yea, the system has gotten
completely out of control and these guys knew exactly what was happening.
Well, you have to understand that some of the guys who designed the system
in California for deregulation then went to work for Enron right after.
In fact, here I'm in London right now and we have, the British has some
responsibility here. The guy who was on the audit committee of Enron, Lord
Wakeham. And this guy is a real piece of work, there isn't a conflict of
interest that he hasn't been involved in. AJ: And he is the head of NM
Rothschild. GP: There isn't anything that he doesn't have his fingers in.
He's on something like fifty Boards. And one of the problems, he was supposed
to be head of the audit committee watching how Enron kept the books. And
in fact, they were paying him consulting fees on the side. He was in Margaret
Thatcher's government and he's the one who authorized Enron to come into
Britain and take over power plants here in Britain. And they owned a water
system in the middle of England. This is what this guy approved and then
they gave him a job on the board. And on top of being on the board, they
gave him a huge consulting contract. So you know, this guy was supposed
to be in charge of the audit committee to see how they were handling their
accounts. AJ: Well, he is also the head of the board to regulate the media.
GP: Yes, he is, because I have run into real problems, because he regulates
me. AJ: They are also trying to pass laws in England where you've got an
800-year old well, or in some cases a 2000-year old well that the Romans
built that's on your property and they say we are putting a meter on it.
You can't have your own water. GP: Yea, and that's Lord Wakeham. I mean
this is the guy from Enron. He is a real piece of work. He can't be touched
here because like I say he actually regulates the media. So if you complain,
he's got his hand on your pen. AJ: Burrow into NM Rothschild, you'll find
it all there. Go through these four points. I mean you've got the documents.
The IMF/World Bank implosion, four points, how they bring down a country
and destroy the resources of the people. GP: Right. First you open up the
capital markets. That is, you sell off your local banks to foreign banks.
Then you go to what's called market-based pricing. That's the stuff like
in California where everything is free market and you end up with water
bills - we can't even imagine selling off water companies in the United
States of America. But imagine if a private company like Enron owned your
water. So then the prices go through the roof. Then open up your borders
to trade - complete free marketeering. And Stiglitz who was the chief economist,
remember he was running this system, he was their numbers man and he was
saying it was like the opium wars. He said this isn't free trade; this
is coercion trade. This is war. They are taking apart economies through
this. AJ: Well look, China has a 40% tariff on us, we have a 2% on them.
That's not free and fair trade. It's to force all industry to a country
that the globalists fully control. GP: Well, you know Walmart - I did a
story, in fact, if you read my book. Let me just mention that I've got
a book out, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" about how, unfortunately,
America has been put up for sale. "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" is
coming out this week. But I have a story in there about how Walmart has
700 plants in China. There is almost nothing in a Walmart store that comes
from the United States of America, despite all the eagles on the wall.
AJ: Exactly, like 1984, then they have big flags saying "Buy American"
and there's hardly anything --- it's Orwellian double-think. GP: What's
even worst is they will hire a factory and right next to it will be the
sister factory which is inside a prison. You can imagine the conditions
of these workers producing this lovely stuff for Walmart. It's really....
AJ: And if an elitist needs a liver, they just call. GP: (Laughs) I know,
it's grim. In fact, I talked to a guy, Harry Wu, is his name and, in fact,
he broke into, he's been in Chinese prison for 19 years. No one believed
his horrible stories. He actually broke back into prison, took a camera
with him and took pictures of the conditions and said this is the conditions
of factories where Walmart is getting its stuff made at, it's all.... AJ:
I was threatened to be thrown off TV here in Austin when I aired video
of little girls 4-years old chained down, skinnier than Jews in concentration
camps, to die. And I was threatened, if you ever air that again, you will
be arrested. GP: Well you know, it is horrifying stuff that, unfortunately,
I have been handed and Stiglitz, was very courageous for him to come out
and make these statements. Like I said, he didn't provide me the documents.
The documents really sealed it because it said this is what really happened.
They really do say sign on the dotted line agreeing to 111 conditions for
each nation. And the public has no say; they don't know what the hell is
happening to them. All they know.... AJ: Go back into privatization. Go
through these four points. That's the key. It sends billions to politicians
to hand everything over. GP: Yea, he called it briberization, which is
you sell off the water company and that's worth, over ten years, let's
say that that's worth about 5 billion bucks, ten percent of that is 500
million, you can figure out how it works. I actually spoke to a Senator
from Argentina two weeks ago. I got him on camera. He said that after he
got a call from George W. Bush in 1988 saying give the gas pipeline in
Argentina to Enron, that's our current president. He said that what he
found was really creepy was that Enron was going to pay one-fifth of the
world's price for their gas and he said how can you make such an offer?
And he was told, not by George W. but by a partner in the deal, well if
we only pay one-fifth that leaves quit a little bit for you to go in your
Swiss bank account. And that's how it's done. AJ: This is the .... GP:
I've got the film. This guy is very conservative. He knows the Bush family
very well. And he was public works administrator in Argentina and he said,
yea, I got this call. I asked him, I said, from George W. Bush. He said,
yea, November 1988, the guy called him up and said give a pipeline to Enron.
Now this is the same George W. Bush who said he didn't get to know Ken
Lay until 1994. So, you know..... AJ: So now they are having these white-wash
hearings. You know I was at Enron yesterday in Houston because I'm now
here in Austin. We were like 30-feet from the door, right on the sidewalk
and I have it on video - goons came up and said you can't videotape. I
said go ahead and have me arrested. I mean I'm talking on the sidewalk,
Greg. GP: Well, you know, I was there in May, telling people in Britain
you've never heard of Enron, but ... And these are the guys who have figured
out how to (garbled) this government. In fact, we saw some interesting
documents, a month before Bush took office, Bill Clinton, I think to get
even with Bush's big donor, cut Enron out of the California power market.
He put a cap on the prices they could charge. They couldn't charge more
than one-hundred times the normal price for electricity. That upset Enron.
So Ken Lay personally wrote a note to Dick Cheney saying get rid of Clinton's
cap on prices. Within 48 hours of George W. Bush taking office, his energy
department reversed the clamps on Enron. OK, how much is that worth
for those guys. You know that has got to be worth, that paid off in a week
all the donations. AJ: Listen at the bombs you are dropping. You are interviewing
these ministers, former head of IMF/World Bank economist - all of this,
you've got the documents, paying people's Swiss Bank accounts, all this
happening. Then you've got Part 2, what do they do after they start imploding?
GP: Well, then they tell you to start cutting your budgets. A fifth of
the population of Argentina is unemployed, and they said cut the unemployment
benefits drastically, take away pension funds, cut the education budgets,
I mean horrible things. Now if you cut the economy in the middle of a recession
that was created by these guys, you are really going to absolutely demolish
this nation. After we were attacked on September 11, Bush ran out and said
we got to spend $50 to $100 billion dollars to save our economy. We don't
start cutting the budget, you start trying to save this economy. But they
tell these countries you've got to cut, and cut, and cut. And why, according
to the inside documents, it's so you can make payments to foreign banks
- the foreign banks are collecting 21% to 70% interest. This is loan-sharking.
If fact, it was so bad that they required Argentina to get rid of the laws
against loan-sharking. because any bank would be a loan-shark under Argentine
law. AJ: But Greg, you said it yourself and the documents show it. They
first implode the economy to create that atmosphere. They institute the
entire climate that does this. GP: Yea, and then they say, well gee, we
can't lend you any money except at these loan-shark rates. We don't allow
people to charge 75% interest in the United States. That's loan-sharking.
AJ: Part 3 and Part 4. What do they do after they do that? GP: Like I said,
you open up the borders for trade, that's the new opium wars. And once
you have destroyed an economy that can't produce anything, one of the terrible
things is that they are forcing nations to pay horrendous amounts for things
like drugs - legal drugs. And by the way, that's how you end up with an
illegal drug trade, what's there left to survive on except sell us smack
and crack and that's how... AJ: And the same CIA national security dictatorship
has been caught shipping that in. GP: You know, we are just helping our
allies. AJ: This is just amazing. And so, drive the whole world down, blow
out their economies and then buy the rest of it up for pennies on the dollar.
What's Part 4 of the IMF/World Bank Plan? GP: Well, in Part 4, you end
up again with the taking apart of the government. And by the way, the real
Part 4 is the coup d'etat. That's what they are not telling you. And I'm
just finding that out in Venezuela. I just got a call from the President
of Venezuela. AJ: And they install their own corporate government. GP:
What they said was here you've got an elected president of the government
and the IMF has announced, listen to this, that they would support a transition
government if the president were removed. They are not saying that they
are going to get involved in politics - they would just support a transition
government. What that effectively is is saying we will pay for the coup
d'etat, if the military overthrows the current president, because the current
president of Venezuela has said no to the IMF. He told those guys to go
packing. They brought their teams in and said you have to do this and that.
And he said, I don't have to do nothing. He said what I'm going to do is,
I'm going to double the taxes on oil corporations because we have a whole
lot of oil in Venezuela. And I'm going to double the taxes on oil corporations
and then I will have all the money I need for social programs and the government
- and we will be a very rich nation. Well, as soon as they did that, they
started fomenting trouble with the military and I'm telling you watch this
space: the President of Venezuela will be out of office in three months
or shot dead. They are not going to allow him to raise taxes on the oil
companies. AJ: Greg Palast, here is the problem. You said it when you first
came out of the gates. They are getting hungry, they are doing it to the
United States now. Enron, from all the evidence that I've seen was a front,
another shill, they would steal assets and then transfer it to other older
global companies, then they blew that out and stole the pension funds.
Now they are telling us that terrorism is coming any day. It's going to
happen if you don't give your rights up. Bush did not involve Congress
and the others who are supposed to be in the accession if there is a nuclear
attack in the secret government, Washington Post -"Congress Not Advised
of Shadow Government." We have the Speaker of the House not being told.
This looks like coup d'etat here. I'm going to come right out with it.
We had better spread the word on this now or these greedy creatures are
going to go all the way. GP: I'm very sad about one thing. I report this
story in the main stream press of Britian. I'm on the BBC despite Lord
Wakeham. I know he doesn't like me there. I'm in the BBC, I'm in the main
daily paper, which is the equivalent of the New York Times or whatever,
and we do get the information out. And I'm just very sorry that we have
to have an alternative press, an alternative radio network and everything
else to get out the information that makes any sense. I mean this information
should be available to every American. I mean, after all, it's our government.
### At http://www.GregPalast.com you can read and subscribe to Greg Palast's
London Observer columns and view his reports for BBC Television's Newsnight.
********** Primitive accumulation of capital in conteporary times. www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=125&...
add your own comments Very frightening (english) by Dhunter 4:08pm Wed
Mar 13 '02 When you look at the whole picture and not just at isolated
incidents, it seems that the corporations are SPEEDING UP THEIR TIMETABLE
for world domination. I myself had thought that their power-grab would
accelerate after 2005, here in the Western Hemisphere anyway, when the
FTAA kicks in. But this interview reminds of a quote from the Book of Revelations
in the Bible: "The beast knows its time is short". It seems to me that
we could be facing a process that is over in MONTHS rather than years.
Primitive Accumulation (english) by wwicko 6:53pm Wed Mar 13 '02 In the
age of discovery, populations in the new world were exterminated and their
resources taken by European imperialist. This activity was the source of
accumulated capital for the European empires. This activity, which might
be called "plundering," was called by Karl Marx "primitive accumulation
of capital." Primitive accumulation of capital is the only real source
of capital, or material inputs, for the economic system we refer to as
capitalism. Capitalism is premised on infinte exponential growth, or infinite
exponential accumulation of material wealth. The problem is that there
are real material limits to economic growth. As is argued at www.dieoff.com,
the earth is a sphere, a sphere is finite, thus the resources contained
therein are finite. A system, such as capitalism, premised on infinite
growth in a finite environment will eventually begin to reach those limits,
at which time the capitalists will likely begin to hoard the few remaining
resources (i.e. Oil in the Caspian Region, and fresh water supplies). It
is getting more difficult for capitalists to acquire inputs for their system
because we are nearing the limits of our finite sphere and the easy pickings
are already consumed. For efficiency in acquiring the remaining resources,
the mechanism of primitive accumulation has been institutionalized in the
form of the international banking system headed by the IMF and the World
Bank. The dictates of this institution are enforced by the US military.
Another factor in this historical process is that the human beings who
weren't suffering antisocial personality disorder have resisted the ugly
truth that is the heart of capitalism. It is an economic system that must
kill and consume to survive. At the end of the age of discovery, those
human beings with an intact social instinct resisted the destruction of
cultures for the purpose having luxury foodstuffs and linens. These intact
human beings also resisted slavery, which is an another form of primitive
accumulation. Once they understood how perverse these activities were,
intact human beings said, "No more." (When will we understand that wage-slavery
is not freedom?) Back to my original line of thought. With all this resistance
going on, the process of destruction that is necessary for the capitalism
to continue has been, as George Orwell knew it would be, propagandized.
The ugly truth is distorted, and the true motives for the ongoing destruction
of what remains of the world are concelaed behind a number of meaningless
rationales such as humanitarian missions, a war on drugs, and a war on
terrorism. Soon there will be precious little left to possess that is not
already possessed by capitalists. At this point the economic system of
Capitalism will collapse because there will be no further opportunity for
primitive accumulation, and this centuries long Ponzi scheme will be over.
Unfortunately, for most of us, the process will be very messy and very
lethal. I wonder if at that point the "material preconditions for the socialization
of the means of production" (Marx) will be present and the proletariat
will usher in some golden age? Its kinda like waiting for Christ to return.
--------------- THE STATE OF MIND - December 18, 2001 By Israel Shamir
The steep slopes of Wadi Keziv in Western Galilee are walled by squat local
oaks and thorny bush. On the streambed, oleanders and cypresses look into
shallow ponds formed by its springs. I like this secluded canyon. On hot
summer days, one can hide in an intricate deep cave and laze in its cool
clear waters, waiting for deer and hoping for a nymph. On cooler days,
you can climb up a steep spur rising amidst the gorge. It is called qurain,
the Horn, in Arabic, hence the Arab name of Wadi Keziv, Wadi Qurain. Astride
the spur, the Crusader castle of Monfort raises its donjon high and gazes
towards the distant Mediterranean Sea. This place holds many memories.
The 12th century Zionists, Teutonic knights of St Mary fortified the castle
on the spur, and called it Starkenberg, the Mount of Strength. The name
and the remote location didn't help: they were defeated by Salah ad-Din,
the Arab paragon of valour and compassion, who allowed them to depart with
their weapons and honour for Eastern Europe. The stony path leading to
the spring was the meeting ground of the enchanting characters of Arabesques,
an exquisite novel by the Palestinian writer Anton Shammas. Shammas, a
native of nearby Fassuta, is probably the only non-Jew in the world who
writes his books and poems in Israeli Hebrew. Farther west, the brook of
Keziv flows into the sea at the ruins of az-Ziv, the Christian village
destroyed by Jews in 1948. In this village, in the long-gone 1920s, a local
Palestinian girl was visited by another local Palestinian woman, the Virgin.
In other words, it is a typical place in the unusual land of Palestine.
These days, you can roam the canyon all by yourself. It is as empty of
people as the rest of countryside. The land of Palestine is in trouble,
the deepest trouble since the black nights of 1948. People do not venture
down here anymore, leaving the canyon to its lean and wiry boar. Walking
downstream, I spotted a few of these gracious animals, so different from
their domesticated cousins. It was only outside the gorge, on the plain
of Acre that I came across a human presence. There were a few Thai or Chinese
peasants working the fields of a local kibbutz. A middle-aged kibbutznik
sat in the shadow overseeing their work. I joined him for a smoke and a
drink of cold water. He was the epitome of a good Israeli, large, sunburned,
with a friendly smile, bushy mustachio and brisk talk. Fifty years ago,
he or rather his predecessor, a fighter of the Jewish Storm Troopers, the
Palmach, would seize the lands of az-Ziv and expel its peasants to Lebanon.
Thirty years ago, he would work the stolen land with his own hands. Now,
he oversees the Thais working this land. Very soon, he told me, he will
go to New York, to visit his son, a web designer. While he is away, some
Russians from Maalot town will be hired to oversee the Asian workers for
the kibbutz. Not many Jews are interested in working the land, or even
in overseeing Thais working it, he said. The kibbutz hopes to get a building
permit, build housing and sell the real estate. It is a valuable site,
near Naharia and Acre, and it will fetch a premium price, despite the crisis,
he said. I shook hands and bid farewell to him, to the sweaty Thais, to
the green fields, to the mountains of Lebanon to the north, concealing
the refugee camps where dwell the original inhabitants of as-Ziv, to the
Galilee mountains to the east, holding the Russian town of Maalot. I hitched
a ride to Nahariya, and from there, I took a train homewards to Jaffa.
The train carried a few Africans, probably illegal immigrants judging by
their shy demeanour. A Romanian building team was gulping beer and burping
loudly. They were imported from their impoverished East European land to
build the houses for elderly Russian immigrants. Just like in California,
the Israeli Jews do not want to be employed in construction. A Jewish Israeli
lawyer in black yarmulke leafed through papers in his semi-opened briefcase.
A blond and armed Israeli soldier talked Ukrainian with its fricative h's
to his corpulent girlfriend. He extolled his own heroic fight against multitudes
of Arab terrorists under her admiring eyes. A group of Moroccans discussed
the closure of the Acre steel plant and their slim chances of finding other
work. The crisis is deepening, one of them said. It is as bad as in 1966.
The train rolled through Haifa, and I thought of the hundreds of thousands,
maybe millions of Americans, Jews and Christian Zionists, who lobby, pray,
support and pay - no, not for the Jewish state built on the ruins of Palestine,
as they imagine. That would be bad enough. But the reality is worse. I
thought of the millions of Palestinians, rotting in refugee camps and jails,
dispossessed, expelled, - victims not of Jewish greed for land, as they
imagine, but of something worse - of a ghost. The Jewish state is a virtual
state that is quickly losing all remaining connection to reality. This
ghost of a state kills people and collects money in America; it continues
some nefarious existence, like the legal term, 'estate of the deceased'.
Its fields are worked by imported guest workers, guarded by imported Russians
and Ethiopians, explained by Israeli professors who are forever off lecturing
in American universities and by brave generals on the lookout for a big
kickback from American weapon-makers. Unemployment grows daily, vital services
are on strike; the tourist industry has collapsed months ago. Hotels are
boarded up and other branches of the national economy are close to collapse.
Israelis buy flats in Florida and Prague, while houses in Israel go begging
for buyers. Sharon's desire to punish the Palestinians has the sting of
punishing one's own left hand. Palestinians and Israelis are intertwined
and integrated, and this separation kills the economy of both. From far
away America, Israel looks like a giant nuclear state, the great ally of
the United States, a Jewish state that is a source of pride for American
Jews. A visitor leaves our shores with a strong feeling of our identity
and prosperity. Only we, permanent residents, know that it is a cardboard
sham. Israel is collapsing, as its active citizens emigrate in despair,
while generals complete the destruction of the country. A cruel fate befalls
the native Palestinians: a ghost kills them, a spiritless body walking
the corridors of the Congress and the deserts of the Middle East in Zombie-like
trance. For the sake of this spectre, important American Jews squeeze every
penny from their employees and countrymen, cut down on pensions to old
and assistance for children, reduce the health and education budget, dry
up help to Africa and Latin America, build improbable coalitions with notorious
racists of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell's kind, demand destruction of
Iraq, bless the bombing of Afghani refugees, keep Afro-Americans in their
ghettos, undermine their host society, make enemies for themselves and
for America. These deeds would be vile enough even if they would accomplish
something of value to someone, but they are worse because they are useless.
The Zionist experiment has practically collapsed. It can run for many yeas
to come on life-support, as a brain-dead vegetable. It can kill people,
maybe even start the next world war. But it cannot become alive. The Jewish
state of Israel is a state of mind, a projection of the American Jewish
mind. The worries and problems it articulates are American Jewish problems.
For Israeli 'Jews', there is no need for segregation, war, or subjugation
of natives. We eat no bagels with lox, speak no Yiddish, read no Saul Bellow
or Sholom Aleichem, and avoid synagogues. We prefer Arab food and Greek
music. My neighbourhood has seven pork butchers to a kosher one. Forty
per cent of Tel Aviv weddings are done outside Jewish framework: young
Israelis prefer to go to Cyprus to get married, just to avoid contact with
Rabbis. Tel Aviv is the gay capital of the Middle East, though according
to Jewish law, gays should be exterminated. If American Jews did not bribe
Israelis on a large scale, we would just forget about the Diaspora and
dissolve into the hospitable Middle East. If they continue to bankroll
us, we shall oblige them with a small show of Jewishness. We are master-sellers
of illusion, and as long as there are buyers, we shall provide the goods.
In 1946, a group of dedicated men from all over the world came to Palestine
under the aegis of the UN. They were sent to prepare the ground for partition
of the land. Among other places, they visited the southernmost kibbutz,
Revivim in the arid Negev. There, they came across a wonderful flowerbed
with roses, anemones, and violets in front of the kibbutz office. In their
report, the members of the delegation expressed their amazement and stated,
'Jews make the desert bloom, let them have the Negev'. As they left, the
kibbutz youngsters went out and pulled the already dying flowers out of
the sand. They had just bought the flowers same morning on the Jaffa market
and had planted them as props for the duration of the visit. This small
outlay of cash had transferred Negev with its two hundred thousand Palestinians
to the Jewish state. Most of the natives were expelled across the newly
drawn border, to the camps of Gaza or Jordan. It was cruel and useless:
even now, fifty years later, the Negev south of Beersheba has a smaller
population than in 1948. In order to populate depopulated lands, the Mossad
broke and terrorised the Jewish communities of North Africa. The Jews were
brought in, sprayed with DDT lice-killer and placed into refugee camps
that soon became the towns of Netivot, Dimona, Yerucham. They are still
there, in the stark desert outpost towns full of unemployment and misery,
drawing social benefits and nursing a deep dislike for the Ashkenazi Jews
who lounge in Tel Aviv's cafes. It is probably the only place on earth
where you are liable to hear, 't'is pity you did not burn in Auschwitz'.
Thus the conjuring tricks of Revivim, the conquest of Negev, the expulsion
of Palestinians and the destruction of the Moroccan Jewish community succeeded
separately, but ultimately failed altogether. It could be expected: evil
and immoral deeds cannot bear good fruit. Zionist leaders dreamed of making
Palestine as Jewish as England is English. They failed. Palestine is as
Jewish as Jamaica is English. The land of Palestine is being ruined now,
in front of our very eyes. Its beautiful old villages are bombed to oblivion;
churches are emptied of their flocks; olive trees are uprooted. Such ruin
has not befallen the land since the Assyrian invasion 2700 years ago. Nothing
can comfort us in the face of this great destruction, and certainly the
people responsible for it - whether Israeli killers or their American Jewish
supporters - will be damned forever. Still, a wry irony of history will
remain as a footnote in the books: the Jewish leadership committed these
crimes in vain, and received no gain out of it. Even if the last Palestinian
were to be crucified on the hill of Golgotha, even that would not breath
life into the virtual Jewish state of Israel. --------------------
>Kelley merely despises democracy and therefore sneers at all the >methods
by which democracy can be made an actuality rather >than of leaders swaying
through advertising and *her* kind of >manipulative slogans rather than
the leninist slogan which summarizes >and gives focus to the practice of
the people themselves. Her >boorish sneering at slogans while utterly ignorant
of the history of >their political use gives the lie to her claims of extensive
political >practice. She has rather engaged in bureaucratic dominance based
>on intellectual charisma. i did say a thing about slogans carrol. i didn't
sneer one way or another except to laugh at people who i knew would reject
slogans and yet engaged in their use in a game of oneupmanship. so, i conclude
that the meds need to be adjusted coz you're hearing voices again. as for
my take on democracy well here it is again from my post on working class
civil society of which you've heard some about from patrick bond, except
adapted for the US. if you think the below, which is about how to foster
the building of demcratic practices and institutions is undemocratic, you've
got some strange notions of democracy. somday, try looking into the solidarity
movment because much of what we did in the community of which i speak was
modeled on that experience. -----paste----- for one thing, ehrenreich is
being pragmatic and she's asking people to engage in political practice.
get involved and *do* something that will help people and in the process
you might bridge the consumer divides, instead of investigating one's navel
for lint and classifying it according to some ossified typification of
real politics, to wit: > I know it sounds scary, but it will be a lot less
so if we can make >sharing stylish again and excess consumption look as
ugly as it actually >is. Better yet, give some of your time and your energy
too. But if all you >can do is write a check, that's fine: Since Congress
will never >redistribute the wealth (downward, anyway), we may just have
to do it >ourselves. --------------- yoshie: >Ehrenreich is the Martha
Stewart of progressive politics, for Ehrenreich >thinks that housework
is a _moral_ issue _for women_, a spiritually >uplifting testimony to women's
industriousness . actually, she's talking about how the *shared* experience
of gendered labor in the form of housework--the social conditions of labor--gave
us something in common. now, the division of labor and the commodification
of what was once unpaid labor presents us as enemies, as she astutely notes.
the answer, at least one, for her is to create alternative political practices,
as i mentioned above. no, it's not radical or marxist as you would have
it. but if we sit around waiting for the time to be right for radical,
marxist change we'll be sitting around forever. marx surely didn't say
that we could only pursue radical political practices, but must take a
side in the struggles and wishes of the age and move them progressively
forward. she's drawing on an approach that in sociology is evident in the
lit on "civil society". it is in civil society--in the practices of commitment
to something greater than one's self (in union struggles, in organizing,
in volunteering, etc) that we create shared lifeworlds (habermas) with
people we might not ever come in contact with otherwise. in the process
we learn to see the world from the perspective of someone besides our selves
and those in our "chosen" lifestyle enclaves. in the process, (and this
is habermas's schtick) we learn to create alternative social institutions
in which *we* negotiate the rules through which we decide to live together.
these are social practices that might, just might, present real alternatives
to the colonizing logics of the market and state. this involves morality.
the market encourages a morality of self-interest maximization. "let me
keep my own and i will become, without ever thinking about it, my brother's
keeper". the state encourages a morality of obedience to rules said to
be in the service of the greater good: people who one does not know, but
nonetheless depends on through vast intricate divisions of labor. (when
that division of labor breaks down through strikes or disasters we realize
just how much we need people all over the globe in order to enjoy modern
conveniences) civil society, on the other hand, creates and is sustained
by practices of reciprocity and we learn how to create, for ourselves,
the rules by which we are to live together. (and this, i think, is what
sam, brett, eric, i [and maybe angela] often are on about: where do people
fit in? where do we, in this coming utopia, become part of the process
of deciding how it is that we ought to organize our lives. which is why
i think brett's parecon model is interesting but also problematic ] we
might get involved for all the wrong reasons, too. moralistic, selfish,
whatever. my students, for ex, talk about working with the special olympics
simply because they wanted to put that work on their applications to college.
however, in the process, they learned about a world they never would have
known existed and that turns them into people who are much more sympathetic
to the daily lives of the disabled. to bore frances to tears, i'll mention,
yet again, the anti nuke dump protests. while people started out protesting
from a NIMBY position, their involvement in that struggle put them in contact
with people engaged in similar struggles all over the world: latino communities
in texas, ukrainian communities, etc. rural whites were in contact with
those from worlds that, from a distance, they could easily ignore and belittle.
but the shared experience of capital/state oppression made them realize
connections they would never have realized had they not gotten involved
with. they can no longer take the view of observer and ignore and belittle.
"those" people are no longer "those" people. as demonstrated by numerous
social movement studies done on that community and others, these people
went on to get involved in other environmental issues. issues they might
never have cared about before. also, their NIMBY critique turned into a
larger critique of, at first, the state and then of capitalism -- a critique
of the capitalist economy that produced nuclear waste in the first place.
a critique that recognized that it was power companies who were trying
to shuffle the cost of doing business off onto taxpayers, who were make
us pay for the disposal of waste. people also got involved n issues they
might not have cared about were it not from direct involvement--involvement
that they took up themselves for selfish, moralistic, pious reasons to
begin with. this had real consequences when plant closings hit the communities.
1. they were much more cognizant of the rippling effects of the economy
and much more concerned about the people in mexico who were the would be
beneficiaries of the relocation. this, i would contend, is very likely
a direct result of their political engagement in the anti nuke dump protests.
2. their active engagement in struggle meant that they felt a sense of
efficacy--that they could accomplish something, that it was do-able. a
decade of such struggle and involvement, in turn, meant that the last time
a plant announced that it would be closing up shop, the workers walked
out on the spot. just up and left. and, unlike earlier plant closing announcements,
many more people spoke out against the practice. and many more people were
on the side of the workers who were working for minimum wage in a plant
that had promised all kinds of things to that community in order to get
tax abatements: we tore down houses, an entire street, at county expense
for that plant and they paid not one red cent in taxes. five years later,
they packed up and left. a normally very docile community was radicalized
by their involvement in alternative institutions in civil society. twenty
years before, a community sat idly by with a "fuck us over we like it attitude"
toward corporations. twenty years before, the town fathers posted a billboard
on the highway that pretty much announced to the world that we liked getting
fucked over. no more. not after the nuke dump protests. no more, not after
the engagement in protests against the last plant closing. and those engagements
in protest were made possible by civil society *and* by the work of people
thinking about ways to strengthen civil society and to create public spheres
of active, practical engagements with the struggles and wishes of the age.
yes, that would be lousy shit fer brains social scientists, often involved
because they needed the r.a. monies or the research experience or the publications
or because they wanted to piously demonstrate their moralizing concern
for the down trodden. whatever. they couldn't have lasted long in that
project without being affected by it and without learning to see what it's
like in another world-- a world of the rural working poor that they often
disparaged. it was civil society that provided the foundation for the community's
engagement in political practices to begin with. what were they? voluntary
organizations that people often joined out of a sense of pious moralism:
churches, little leagues, the grange, the ywca, book reading groups, women's
league of voters, quilting circles, etc etc etc. how were they the backbone
of a (comparatively) insurrectionary struggle against the state? these
organizations provided the resource and practical infrastructure that enabled
that protest to get off the ground in the first place. they provided a
group of people who were used to donating their time for this or that project.
people who were willing to do the shit grunt work, like typing letters,
licking envelopes, making phone calls, digging up info. people who knew
how to interact with people they didn't always get along with. people who
brought you donuts and hot coffee when you were standing outside the county
office building freezing your tail off waiting from some government official.
while enrenreich ought to go further in advocating such an approach, she
at least did hint that it wasn't enough to write a check out to an organization.
perhaps doug couuld press her on this. nonetheless, i suspect from reading
ehrenreich carefully over the years, she is coming from the above analysis
of what it takes to make social movements work and why it is necessary
to engage in and strengthen alternative social institutions and practices
rather than denouncing them as insignificant. that may well be true in
the long run. i don't know. but my hopelessly optimistic side, one nurtured
by witnessing the transformation i witnessed above, makes me suspect it's
worth a shot. -----------------